


Promise Kept

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Death, F/M, Ghosts, Grief, Yeah this is a sad one, and hopefully a lil creepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29913837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Cisco's dead, and it's all her fault.
Relationships: Cisco Ramon/Caitlin Snow
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	Promise Kept

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hedgi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/gifts).



> Soooooo . . . I put this on Tumblr about a month ago, and somehow kept forgetting to put it up here. Woops.

The rain pattered on her umbrella. Caitlin focused on the sound, which was not at all like the rain option on the white-noise machine in her bedroom. She wished she were there, listening to her white-noise machine, wrapped in her blankets, alone in the dark.

Not here, at the cemetery, listening to the last words of the funeral service.

The rain started coming down harder, and she focused on the water running off the polished wooden surface of the casket as it waited to be lowered into the ground. She remembered standing like this at another funeral, the wind cutting cold through her thin dress coat, Cisco’s warm bulk next to her under the umbrella.

Now she was alone under the umbrella, and Cisco was in the casket. Which was now being lowered into the ground. She found her breath strangled in her throat. Cisco would hate that. Hate being buried, there under the ground, where he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe …

Someone nudged her. She focused with a jolt, and Iris held out a rose, dripping rainwater.

Right.

Right. They were supposed to … 

She took it and a thorn that the florist had missed jabbed her thumb, a bright spark of pain in the middle of the grey numbness. She almost dropped it, but managed to fling it instead, vaguely in the direction of the casket. It hit the edge of the open grave and tumbled onto the wooden top with a splat. 

She let out a breath that was almost a sob. She wanted the flower back. She wanted to do it over again. Better.

She wanted to do so many things over again, better.

People were starting to leave. The funeral was done, and they were turning and leaving Cisco there, in the casket, in the soggy ground, alone.

* * *

If the funeral had been bad, the reception afterward was worse. Caitlin sat on a hard chair in the corner of the room, holding a sandwich and a cookie for the sake of having something to do with her hands. She wasn’t hungry. She hadn’t been hungry since -

“How did it happen?” someone said, off to one side. She looked over, but the two women were leaning close together. Asking each other, not her.

“Some kind of accident. Nobody’s really clear.”

“God, how awful. He was so young.”

“His whole life ahead of him.”

“His poor mother. She had two healthy sons and lost them both.”

Caitlin across the room. Cisco’s mom was weeping again, another woman holding her. A sister, maybe. One of Cisco’s aunts. 

She lurched up from her chair and grabbed her coat. She couldn’t stay here, listening to people speculating on what had happened, when she knew it was all her fault.

She was out the door and heading to her car when someone called out, “Caitlin, wait.”

She stopped and turned. Cecile came up to her, eyes kind. “Are you going?”

She nodded jerkily. 

The other woman took her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Nobody blames you.”

She twisted out of her comforting grasp. “They should." 

* * *

He’d told her once, “If we’re going to keep ending up in life-or-death situations, trust that I will save you every single time.”

She couldn’t remember the occasion. It had been a couple of years ago after they started helping Barry with the Flash, and she’d gotten into some kind of danger, and Cisco had gotten her out of it.

She remembered his expression, though, smiling but serious. A promise.

At the time, she’d smiled back and hugged him. She should have stopped him. Should have told him, _If rescuing me would mean your death, don’t do it. Promise me. Don’t ever do it._

But she hadn’t, and he had, and now …

She went through the motions of getting showered and changed for bed as if she were a robot. The rain still drummed on the roof, occasionally punctuated by a sulky roll of thunder. Huddled under her blankets, she shivered. She’d been cold since the cemetery, although she rarely got cold anymore. 

She picked up a book and tried to read herself to sleep, but the words slid and twisted out of her mind. After three attempts at the same page of a book she’d read at least ten times before, she gave up and switched off the light.

After Ronnie had died, all she’d wanted to do was sleep. But now, the comfort of unconsciousness eluded her. She lay curled under her weighted blanket, staring into the dark, grief throbbing inside her like a broken tooth.

The rain was coming down harder now. She focused on the storm, on counting the seconds between the flickers of brightness and the roll of thunder. They were getting closer. The teeth of the storm must be right over - 

_KER-CRASH_

For an instant, her whole bedroom lit up white and simultaneously, a crack of thunder rattled her bones.

In the next instant, light and noise were both gone and she was lying in the dark again, listening to the rain, eyes wide.

Then a huge creaking crash just outside her window brought her upright. "What - ” she said aloud, reaching for her reading lamp. But the room remained dark, even when she twisted the switch again and then a third time.

Dammit. She must have lost power.

She fumbled around for her phone, unhooking it from the dead charger, and kicked her blankets aside. Making her way to the window, she leaned on the glass and squinted out into the storm. 

“Dammit,” she said aloud. She couldn’t make out anything clearly through the rain.

She stuffed her bare feet into a pair of rain boots and grabbed her raincoat from its hook by the side door. Taking the strong flashlight that Cisco had given her when she’d moved in, she opened the back door and peered out, squinting through the rain. 

Oh, no, it was the whole tree.

The lightning had split it down the middle, both sides tipping away from each other, a small fire among its leaves getting rapidly doused by the rain. She swore for the third time and started to step off the porch to get a closer look. 

A hand clamped around her upper arm and a voice shouted in her ear _Stop!_

She dropped the flashlight and froze. Had she heard -

No. 

It wasn’t possible. 

Somehow, her flashlight hadn’t gone out when she dropped it, and the beam of light speared across the yard, rain glinting as it fell through.

It rested cockeyed on the steps at her feet, but as she watched, it rolled. Just a little. Just enough to make the beam sweep slowly across her yard, finally coming to rest in the branches of the tree - 

And the thick, broken power line tangled in them, deadly as a black mamba.

She stared at it for ten seconds, heart beating in her throat. She looked down at the flashlight. 

No. Too much of it was metal, and her fingers might brush the ground when she picked it up. Best not to risk it. 

Very, very carefully, she shuffled backward into her house, calculating the distance from her door to the downed power line. Thirty feet? Maybe forty? She shuffled backward a few more steps just to be safe and collapsed into a kitchen chair.

She reached in the pockets of her raincoat and fumbled out her phone, looking up a number on the internet before dialing. 

“Central City Gas and Power," said the voice on the other end. "How can I help you tonight?”

“Hello,” she said, her voice very level. “My name is Caitlin Snow, I live at 648 Bonneville Way, and one of my trees was struck by lightning about five minutes ago. When it went down, it took a power line with it.”

“Did you touch it, ma'am?”

“No. No, I didn’t.”

“Okay. Is the tree or the power line in the road?”

“I don’t - I’m not sure. Mostly in my yard, I think. My power is out, though.”

“Yes, I’m seeing an outage in that whole area. Do you have children or pets?”

“No.”

“Okay. Due to safety regulations, we won’t be able to get somebody out there until this storm passes. Might be tomorrow morning. Are you going to be okay overnight?”

“Yes. I have emergency candles.”

“Stay at least thirty-five feet away from the power line and the tree. in fact, I’d stay out of your yard completely. Even seemingly dead power lines can deliver lethal doses of electricity, and you don’t even have to be touching it.”

“Yes, yes. I know. I have - I had a friend who worked with electricity a lot and he always made sure I knew all that. I’ll stay inside." 

She hung up and texted her neighbors about the tree. Then she set her phone face down on the table and stared into the darkness.

Without all the various lights and indicators, and no street lights beaming in from outside, the dark was velvety and all-encompassing. But after a few moments, her eyes adjusted enough to register variations in the depth that resolved into washed-out shades of her kitchen. The white of her microwave, the paleness of her counter, the darkness of the other chairs around the table. 

She registered motion out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned her head, it was just the curtains at her kitchen window. Fluttering.

But the air conditioning had gone out with the rest of the power.

She breathed in and out. "Who’s there?”

Frost shifted under her skin, but for some reason, she pushed her powered side down. There had been something about that hand, that voice … 

She swallowed twice and on the second time, managed to say, “Who’s there? Why did you stop me?”

For a moment, the dappled shadows by the kitchen window could have been a human form. An achingly familiar human form … 

_I made a promise, remember?_

FINIS


End file.
